Businessman Sentenced to Prison

January 24, 1986

John M. Mudd, a former D.C. liquor store owner who was convicted last year of receiving stolen government property, was sentenced in federal court here yesterday to the mandatory minimum sentence of two years in prison for committing a felony while free pending trial.

Judge Thomas P. Jackson ordered that the two-year sentence run consecutively to a seven-year sentence that Mudd, 53, of 429 N St. SW, received earlier this month in U.S. District Court in Baltimore where he pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and using a telephone to facilitate a narcotics conspiracy.

Mudd, who also pleaded guilty in federal court here to possession of cocaine and possession of a stolen gun, was given a five-year suspended sentenced on those charges.

Mudd, described by his attorney as having led a "life of truly generous acts toward others," told the court, "I've always had the ability to dine with kings but I have never lost the common touch."

However, Assistant U.S. Attorney E. Thomas Roberts argued that Mudd, a well-known businessman and community leader, lived in "two types of communities" and that among his friends in one were "some of the biggest drug dealers in the District of Columbia."